God’s Junk Drawer

Read Time: 2 Minutes

The premise of God’s Junk Drawer sounded interesting, so I grabbed a copy. Forty years ago, a family vanished during a rafting trip and ended up in a primordial valley populated by dinosaurs, aliens, Neanderthals and androids. Now the surviving son has figured out how to get back, accidentally dragging his graduate students along with him. Peter Clines has built a wild, ambitious world, and for a while that’s enough to keep you going.

The problem is the characters. I genuinely couldn’t stand any of them, which makes sixteen-plus hours a difficult commitment. None of them are particularly likeable, none of them behaved in ways I could get behind, and I spent a good chunk of the book considering the (rare for me) DNF tag. The story idea kept pulling me back though and I listened in short bursts which helped… but I was working against the cast the whole way through.

Part of my issue might be tonal. The whole thing has the energy of a young adult adventure, which isn’t a criticism on its own, except the characters are college-aged graduate students who somehow feel less grounded than a band of kids would have. I kept thinking it might have clicked better if they were younger? There’s a bit of a disconnect between story and how the characters actually behave that I never quite got over.

The story wanders, too. At sixteen hours there’s room for more editing than it got, and some of the world-building logic is a bit odd, like the valley pulls dinosaurs from millions of years back but apparently only reaches a few hundred years into the future, which is a strange distribution curve that nobody in the book seems to question.

None of which is Ray Porter’s fault. He does what Ray Porter does, which is carry difficult material with enough warmth and energy to make it listenable. Audible Studios production is exactly what you’d expect; clean, well-mixed, no complaints.

I did finish it, which says something. The valley itself is compelling enough that I kept coming back even when the characters were testing my patience. I just wish I’d liked any of them more by the end. I doubt I’ll go back to a relisten.

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